50 Times People Tried To Be Creative With Interior Design And Failed Spectacularly (New Pics)

As you scroll through this list, you might notice a trend: tiny apartments with all the rooms of a house cramped into a one-room, 400-square-foot apartment. It's a phenomenon people have been noticing since the late 2010s.

In 2018, apartment search website RENTCafe conducted a study and found that newly built apartments were 5% smaller than they were in 2008. Studio apartments were getting smaller too: their square footage shrunk by 10%. The size of an average new apartment was 941 square feet in 2018. In 2008, it was 993 square feet.

Ironically, people were paying more in rent than ever before. During that decade, rent had increased by a whopping 28%. In 2008, people were paying around $950 on average for an apartment that was almost 1,000 square feet. In 2018, an apartment of 941 square feet cost around $1,994. Essentially, people were paying more and getting less.

Sadly, this trend continued during and after the pandemic. In recent years, the average rent increase peaked in 2021 with an 18% year-over-year increase. It slowed down in 2022, although it was still at "above historic levels" with 12.2%, according to experts.

However, there's something to be happy about concerning the latest data. As of August of 2024, the increase of average rent was steady at a low 0.8%. And the average size of apartments doesn't seem to be shrinking anymore, either. In their 2025 report, NETCafe found that studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments got larger, reaching an average of 908 square feet.

Still, people are having trouble finding apartments to rent all over the world. In the UK, it seems nearly impossible to find a reasonably priced flat amid the cost of living crisis. In London alone, average monthly rent prices reached a record high £2,200 in November 2024. National monthly rent in the UK was £1,300.

Australians are grappling with the same problem, too. SGS Economics & Planning principal Ellen Witte explained in November 2024 that there are households in the biggest cities such as Melbourne and Sydney that would need to pay 75% of their monthly income to be able to afford rent. Researchers dubbed these areas as "critically unaffordable".

If you're paying more than half of your monthly salary, a bedroom with a shower or a toilet next to the bed would definitely feel like a punch in the face. These types of dwellings are also called micro apartments. And while not all are expensive, the common characteristic they all share is limited space.